He might have fallen asleep like that, if not for the voices. They were audible from upstairs.
“—cannot believe it.”
“Well, it happened.” That voice was Aderyn’s, and it was brittle. With exhaustion or anger, or perhaps both.
“It was too close.” That would be Gareth. “We can’t stay here, Ryn. People will have seen him. People will see him. We’ll have to burn the body—it can’t stay down in the pantry.”
“Where are we supposed to go?” Aderyn sounded impatient. “We can’t outrun this, Gareth. And if we leave, we’ll be worse off than if we stay. Here we have land, we have jobs—”
“Not anymore!” Gareth’s voice lashed out. “We don’t even have a house! Eynon might have waited a few more weeks, to see if Uncle would return, but now that there’s proof Uncle’s dead—”
Ellis let the argument slip away into background noise as he leaned his head against the wall, eyes closed. The squabbling felt almost comforting after the night they’d had.
The sound of footsteps made Ellis blink his eyes open. It was the young girl, Ceridwen. She came down the stairs, then she slid to the floor, folding her legs beneath her. “You all right?” he asked. His voice sounded even more hoarse than it usually did.
Ceridwen nodded. “Thanks to you.”
He shrugged. Her gratitude made him feel unaccountably awkward. “Anyone would have done it.”
She looked at him, far older than a young girl should look. “No. Not just anyone would have helped us.”
They sat there in a strangely companionable silence for several minutes. The lack of danger felt as potent as a strong swig of ale, and his limbs were too heavy, his head fogged with exhaustion.
“Your uncle is dead.” The words left his mouth in a tumble, before he even realized he had said them.
Ceridwen nodded, and her voice was dry. “You noticed that?”
“I’m sorry.”
The body was covered; Ellis had taken one of the canvas sheets from a cupboard and tossed it over the dead man.
“I’m not.” Ceridwen gazed at the far wall. “He wasn’t very nice,” she said tonelessly. “Threatened to send us to the city—to workhouses or orphanages if we annoyed him.” She spoke with the kind of honesty that seemed to come from shock—divulging truths that would otherwise have remained silent. Ellis nodded, hoping the gesture conveyed sympathy.
Ceridwen added, “My goat is dead, too. I found her body in the yard.”
“I met her once,” he said. “She seemed like a fine goat.”
Ceridwen nodded. She had the faraway look of someone who had lost too much in too short a time. “She was.”
“What was her name?”
A choked little laugh, and the girl shook her head. “We—we never named her.” Another laugh. “Uncle said we might have to eat her someday—and naming her would make it harder. So we just called her Goat. Now she’ll never have a name.”
Perhaps, on another day, Ellis might have deemed it odd to mourn a goat. But having spent the night fending off hordes of risen dead, this grief seemed perfectly normal. “My sympathies,” he said, with utter sincerity.
Ceridwen nodded again. Then she rose and said, “Are you hungry?”
He shrugged. He was too wearied to tell.
“I’ll make breakfast,” said the young girl. And then, decisively, “You’ll help me.”
Ellis pushed himself upright. “First we fend off bone houses, and then we eat porridge?”
“Yes.”
Colbren smelled of death and burning.
There would be much to fix—the doors, the broken latches—not to mention several dead chickens, and the goat, to be handled. Just looking at the house made Ryn want to retreat to her room to take a nap. But there was no time.
She dealt with her uncle first.
She hoped no one would see.
It was a vain hope. Colbren was a small village, and if there was one thing she knew about small villages, it was that they were sustained by sharp eyes and gossip.
Several of the villagers saw her heave the cart across town. “One of the bone houses or one of us?” asked an older woman, her hair bound in a knot, her knuckles spotted with age. Her face was all worry and concern.
“Bone house,” said Ryn quickly, giving the cart a tug. The old woman reached down before Ryn could stop her, and twitched the old sheet aside.
When she glimpsed the desiccated flesh and familiar half-bald pate, the older woman’s hand jerked, the sheet slipping. Ryn closed her eyes and swayed in place. Should have left the head at home, she thought. And that single thought was so morbid and terrible that she almost laughed.
“I’m sorry,” the old woman said, her expression pained. “We’d hoped—we’d hoped he would come back.”
People always offered platitudes to the grieving; they were always just as meaningless.
“Thank you,” said Ryn. It was the correct response, but she couldn’t put much emotion into the words. Knowledge of her uncle would spread quickly.
Uncle was dead—and debts had to be repaid.
She heaved Uncle into the forge, skin crawling when she touched him. He was damp and heavy, too still, and smelled of forest dirt. She had not felt unease around a body for years, yet she yearned to run from this one. She forced herself to watch the flames consume him, to watch as the sparks caught on his clothes.
An emptiness yawned wide within her. She did not dare look too closely at her own reactions, for fear of what she would find.
There were too many bone houses to place them all in the forge. Ryn helped the other villagers pile up the corpses onto several carts and they were dragged out of the village, downwind of the houses, and gathered in a heap. With the damp grasses and sodden earth, it was difficult to get a flame to catch, but several men kept at it. Finally, a billowing fire caught, and smoke began to stream into the sky.
It was hard work; there were too many bodies—mostly bone houses, but a few villagers—and too few able hands. Those who had thought the bone houses a mere story stood amid the wreckage and looked blankly at one another—at least until Enid snapped at them to get moving. But no one spoke a word of complaint—neither about the work nor the smell.
Not a single body—bone house or villager—could be left in the village, lest it rise again with nightfall. Those who grieved did so quietly; the traditions of bringing food to the bereaved would have to wait until after the village was safe again.
Ryn spotted Morwenna tearing the old boards from an abandoned house to repair the door to the forge. It was the same attitude most of them held: Those who lived in the wilds were as stubborn as they were loyal. Colbren would devour its own homes before it would surrender.
Eynon emerged from his house at midday. He was more unkempt than Ryn could ever remember, with red-veined eyes and hair uncombed. A cooking knife was strapped to his belt.
Ryn was moving toward him before she realized her own intentions. Her hand slammed into the older man’s chest, holding him in place. Anger born of helplessness was the worst kind—it made her want to snarl, to lash out, to take her axe to something she could break. The truth was, she had almost lost the last fragments of her family last night, and she wasn’t sure she could defend them a second time. The bone houses were simply too numerous, and they would not fall to pain nor to exhaustion.
Eynon had put them all in this position. And she yearned to make him feel what she did: that gnawing dread and biting fury.
“I told you,” she said, making no effort to remain quiet. “I told you not to tamper with the iron fence.”
“Don’t touch me,” he snapped. Flickers of anger sparked at the corners of his eyes, drawing old lines taut.
“This is your doing!” She gestured at the body she and Morwenna had been carrying.
“My doing?” His mouth twisted into an ugly snarl. “My doing? I’m not the one who ventures into the woods every day! I’m not the one who led them here!”
“
I didn’t—” Her protest faded into silence.
Fallen kings. She had been out in the forest last night. She had flirted with the edges of Annwvyn, as she had always done. But the terrible magic had never followed her home before. This wasn’t her fault. Even those three stragglers that Ryn had seen outside the forest in the past couple of weeks hadn’t been armed; they were lonely and forgotten bodies, unburied and unremembered. They were each their own small tragedy. These bone houses had come with armor and swords. They had come to make an end of Colbren—and perhaps it had been because the iron fence was half gone.
Or perhaps something else had changed. She did not know.
Eynon knocked her arm away with all the care of someone brushing at an unruly fly. “I know what came to your door,” he said, his voice harsh. “People talk.”
She swallowed hard.
“Your mother is dead,” said Eynon. “Your uncle is dead. Your father is missing—and I have everything I need to ruin your family. The graveyard is mine. The house is mine.” He lowered his voice, so that only she could hear. “You’ll learn that there’s a high cost to threatening me.”
He turned and strode away, servant at his heels. The younger man gave Ryn a narrow-eyed glare before hastening after his master.
A chill crept over Ryn’s bare arms. Her sleeves were rolled, since she’d spent all morning hauling bodies. A heavy mist fell from the iron-gray sky, and she felt the moisture settle in her hair, on her hands, in her mouth. The cold threatened to seep into her bones and freeze her in place. She should have been moving, but she could not.
“Come on,” said Morwenna, giving her a gentle nudge. “There’s no point in worrying when there may not even be a village tomorrow.”
The words hit home—because Morwenna was right. If another attack came tonight, she wasn’t sure Colbren could withstand it. They were a small village, and their fighters were retired soldiers and young farmhands.
If this happened again…
Ryn found herself standing by the fire, feeling the scorch along her bare skin. She watched the flames devour bone and sinew.
This would be the end of Colbren.
This would be the end of her family.
This would be the end of home, of the only place she had ever felt safe.
Unless—
Ryn thought of a bundle of apples on a mossy log. She thought of the quiet spaces between shadow and tree, the moments when she was sure something watched her, something she wasn’t frightened by.
She thought of her father, his fingers tangling in her hair as he kissed the crown of her head. And a broken love spoon in her pocket.
No warrior could stop the dead.
But perhaps a gravedigger could.
IT BEGAN WITH a hunt.
The fortress of Caer Aberhen did not need the food, but its prince was a skittish sort. He was young, having lost his father and mother to the blighted cough. He chafed at the constraints of his new position, and when the endless meetings and paperwork became too much, he declared he would ride out.
The hunt should have stayed within the boundaries of his cantref, but the prince rode farther. He loved the wind on his face, the smells of the trees and mountains, and before he knew it, his horse was restless, skittering away from the trees.
They had ridden to the borders of Annwvyn.
The prince knew all the stories of the mountains. He remembered being frightened of them as a child, hiding beneath his covers lest one of the pwca creep into his room and steal him away. The remembered fear made him reckless now, eager to prove his courage. So he kicked his horse into a trot and went into the forest.
He did not find game, nor did he find monsters. He laughed, because he proved that the stories had no hold on him. But then a branch cracked behind him, and the prince saw the creature emerge from the undergrowth. At first, his heartbeat stuttered with fear—then he saw it was not a creature at all.
It was a wraith of a boy. Hollow-cheeked and silent—perhaps three or four years of age. The prince slid from his horse and went to the child, asking where his parents were, but the boy could not answer. So the prince picked the boy up, placed him in front of him on the horse, and rode back to Caer Aberhen. Every step the horse took made the boy cry out in pain, and he clutched at his left shoulder. The prince checked him for injury, but found only an old scar. “How were you injured?” he asked, but the boy did not answer.
It took a warm bath and a hot meal before the boy uttered a word. “Ellis,” he said, when the prince asked his name.
He did not know where his parents were, or if they even lived at all. “You will stay here,” said the prince, and gave him to the keeping of the servants. The prince saw Ellis as proof of his own charity and goodwill. He would introduce the boy to visiting nobles, tell the story of how Ellis had been found, parentless and alone, and allow praise to be heaped upon himself for giving the lad such a fine home.
Ellis kept his gaze downward, speaking only when asked a question. He rather liked Caer Aberhen, with its thick stone walls and winding corridors. He liked sitting on the roof and watching the people come and go. He liked the thick slices of dark bread clotted with dried cranberries that the cook would save for him. He liked the tutors and the learning, even if he was too fearful to ask questions.
The cook took a liking to him and heaped his porridge with dried berries and honey, and bought tinctures of willow bark when his shoulder ached. Slowly he grew into himself. He smiled and spoke and tried to make friends, but the other children shied away from him. They did not know what to make of him, and Ellis spent most of his time in the courtyard, under the broad leaves of an old wych elm. He was ill-suited to climbing—his left arm could not bear his weight—but he liked to sit with his back to the tree, a book cradled between his knees.
He did not like being a token of the prince’s goodwill. It made him feel as out of place as a stray dog at a noble’s table. And despite the tutors and the fine food, Ellis never made the mistake of thinking he could ever be a noble. The other children made sure of that. One day, a girl, two years older than Ellis, with eyes as blue as a winter’s sky and just as warm, kicked him to the ground and kept him there with a foot on his left shoulder. His eyes watered with hurt and humiliation, and one of the servants chastised the girl for her behavior—calling it unworthy. But the same servant did not so much as glance at Ellis, nor offer him a hand. He rose, red-cheeked and shoulder smarting, all on his own.
When Ellis asked to be and then became apprenticed to a mapmaker, he found friends. He never told them of his past, so they assumed he was the illegitimate son of some noble. It was a common enough story, and he endured a bit of good-natured ribbing over his lack of a family name. And he loved the maps—oh, how he loved the maps. He loved the feel of parchment in his hands, the pins and the string he would use to make straight lines. He even loved the numbers, the way he had to use his thumb to measure distances and to plot paths. There was a logic to it, and a nobility. After all, a town might go hungry if there were no maps to mark its existence. Travelers could vanish and landmarks go unseen.
Part of him wondered if he liked maps because they were a reassurance. A promise that he would never again be without a path.
But in his dreams, he wandered through an endless forest—and he could never find his way home.
CHAPTER 14
ELLIS STRODE THROUGH Colbren. He walked past the torn gardens and collapsed doorways. Some villagers were gathering at the Red Mare; he could see movement through the cracks in the boarded windows. All this destruction had taken place in the course of a single night—and another night was coming on.
When he entered the yard, Ceridwen was at the front door. She had two chickens with her—one under each arm.
“Did they get into the house?” he asked.
The younger girl shook her head. “No, no. I’m bringing them into the house.” Her chin lifted, and he saw a bit of Aderyn’s steel in her eyes when she said, “The bone houses m
ay have killed my goat, but I won’t let them have the chickens, too.”
Ellis nodded. “Do you need help?”
“These are the last ones. I’ll keep them in my room. And hopefully Gareth won’t notice.”
“Where is your brother?” asked Ellis.
“Boarding up the pantry door.”
Sure enough, there was the distant thud of a hammer on wood.
Aderyn strode around the side of the house; she carried a shovel in one hand and another chicken in the other. “Gareth doing manual labor,” she said. “Things have truly gone awry.” She held up the chicken—she had it upside down by the legs, and the bird had its wings extended, but it did not flap nor try to escape; rather, it looked as resigned as a bird could. “You forgot one.”
Ceridwen hastened into the house. “Just—hold on to her for a moment, please!”
Aderyn’s gaze went to Ellis. For a few heartbeats, neither said a word. And then she said, “You still want to pay me to take you into the mountains?”
Surprise made him stumble over the words. “Yes, but… you can’t mean…”
“That I’m still willing to be your guide?” she said. “Well, I am. And we’ll leave tonight.”
“Tonight?” She couldn’t have shocked him more if she’d handed him the chicken and asked him to dance with it. “You wish to leave at night?”
“Yes,” she said. “We’ve boarded up the windows and secured the front door and the pantry door. Save for the doors, this place is as sturdy as anything. My home will be safe—at least, unless the bone houses bring a battering ram. As for Eynon… well, he probably won’t have time to evict us while the bone houses are banging on his door.” Her eyes flicked eastward, in the direction of Eynon’s estate. “And if the bone houses are focusing on the village, perhaps they won’t notice two travelers slip into the forest.”
“You want to use the battle as a distraction so we can get into the forest?” He half expected her to deny it, but she nodded.
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